NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Once driven solely by coin-operated machines and manual oversight, the laundromat industry is transforming with the rise of data-driven operations. More and more modern stores are leveraging smart technology and advanced analytics to optimize efficiency, cut costs and enhance the customer experience.
From dynamic pricing models that respond to demand to predictive maintenance that minimizes downtime, data has become a vital tool for maximizing profits. Understanding, leveraging and protecting data used in laundry operations was the focus of a presentation during the CLA’s recent 2024 WDF Workshop.
Part 1 of this story focused on the search for actionable insights. Part 2 analyzed some data-driven operational changes. Let’s conclude:
ANY CHANGES MADE BASED ON YOUR DATA? (CONTINUED)
Brian Riseland, owner of Laundry Genius, a full-service laundry center in the Seattle metropolitan community of Everett, Washington, came into the laundry industry from the tech world. He says he’s surprised at how similar a laundromat business can be to an online business.
“You’re concerned about reach, frequency and yield: how many, how often, how much,” he says. “In that equation, we really only control one of the variables, and it’s how much.”
He tracks the numbers of customer visits and washer cycles per day.
“I’m going through a path right now where the business didn’t grow like I expected it to. What I think I see in my data is the economy is hitting people and where (customers) might have gone hot and cold in separate 20-pound machines, now they’re shoving them all in one 40, because my number of washers has dropped 10% recently. … I look at that price lever to see if I’m making what I want to, will the customers tolerate a change so that I can maintain that yield, or I’m going to have accept a little less.”
He warns that studying data from short periods of time—he considers even 30 days to be “really short”—can throw you off. With that in mind, he’s more concerned about looking at year-over-year comparisons.
“We’ve broken up our data sets and forecasts on seasonalities,” says Bhavin Patel, CEO of SpinXpress Laundry, with several locations across Texas. “It’s pretty standard in the industry where you see those ebbs and flows throughout your seasons. … Instead of trying to force the marketing and force the customer base to come in and spend those dollars, we actually pull back in marketing in those times because we know that doesn’t mean they’re going to change their behavior.”
WHAT DATA DO YOU DESIRE BUT CAN’T GET?
“National averages around price points would, I think, be helpful to the industry,” says Jason Worme, who owns Star Laundromats in Staten Island and Brooklyn, New York. “If that’s possible, then what I’d like to see is local to your locale. Are there pockets in areas that could support higher price points? I have a bunch of theories and would like to see the data.”
“Another part of our company is hotel revenue management,” adds Patel. “That industry is data-heavy (with property-to-property comparisons). That’s all we do, work on data to understand supply and demand, pickups, events. … What has been done in hospitality has only strengthened the industry, because it weeds out the folks who are trying to price to the bottom.”
“I want no more data right now,” Riseland says, eliciting chuckles from the audience. “I don’t. I want more insights. … I want benchmarking. I want to be able to see how I’m doing against people in this room … Honestly, I can get by with what I have on the data side right now. I just want to make it easier to expose their insights.”
“The data is the table stakes, because even if you’re an offline business, you have no technology, there is data there,” says Alex Jekowsky, Cents CEO and moderator of the CLA presentation. “You can find it by looking at your security camera. You can find ways to quantify something but the insights to understand what it actually means is the value driver here.”
A reluctance on the part of most laundry business owners to share their operating and financial data stands in the way of broad-based industry benchmarking.
“I think that there is an element of bravery … but I think all of us … see the opportunity that’s there if we had those sorts of insights and we did think a little bit more collectively,” says Gilli Cherrin, chief product officer and co-founder of Cents, “to see how much more laundry we can do and how much more money we can make.
“I think that’s a real good call to action for all of us, to think about how we can leverage data as an industry to push it forward.”
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Bruce Beggs at [email protected].
